This election gets weirder and weirder:
Steven Wessel is a convicted con man with a Big Apple flair, feigning connections to Ronald Reagan and pretending to be an Oxford man while bilking rich Manhattanites of $750,000. But his last scam before heading to prison this spring targeted a very different kind of mark: Republican operatives opposed to Donald Trump.
And now those operatives are wondering who put Wessel up to it.
Assuming a variety of fake online identities, including that of a female solicitor in England, Wessel gushed in emails, phone calls and Twitter messages about (made-up) extramarital affairs with the likes of the late Lee Atwater, showered marks with gift cards to the swanky Mandarin Oriental, and invited them to go pheasant-hunting in Scotland — all in an apparent attempt to glean more about the operatives and their intentions regarding Trump. That was until federal prosecutors learned of the activity and a judge revoked Wessel’s bail in April, sending him to prison to begin serving a 55-month sentence ahead of schedule.
In a campaign season marked by the mind-bending, the — until now unreported —caper of Wessel’s months-long “catfishing” of operatives Rick Wilson, Liz Mair and Cheri Jacobus ranks among more bizarre episodes. It could get more bizarre still. The targets of the scheme do not believe that Wessel, described by his own lawyer as mentally ill, was acting alone. This month Jacobus, who said she believes Wessel was working in concert with allies of Trump, renewed her efforts to get the FBI to investigate the scheme.
Read the whole thing.
rikyrah
There really is a good mini-series aching to be made about this campaign season.
germy
Trump would probably award him for his efforts by appointing him Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Mike E
Trump supporters at work are now saying they’re going to write in their voting preference this election… if he makes it to Nov I’m pretty sure they’ll just hold their noses and vote Repub, but then again the wear is starting to show and they may ditch the whole thing and not show up.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@rikyrah: If you’d presented this campaign two years ago as a series pitch in Hollywoodland, you’d have been thrown out of every meeting for “wasting people’s time with unbelievable bullshit”. I know personally my jaw is black and blue from hitting the floor almost every day for the last few months.
MattF
Well, one person got a nice dinner out of it. But… following the money, who paid?
dmsilev
@rikyrah: Good fiction has to have at least a semblance of plausibility.
This year has been weird.
germy
@CONGRATULATIONS!: It would have to be pitched as a screwball comedy. Even then the Hollywoodland execs would say “You gotta tone this thing down a bit. It’s just too weird.”
germy
@Mike E: I hope they choose to stay home and spare us their down-ticket choices.
germy
To make things even weirder, right in the middle of the article John is quoting, I see this ad:
Does anyone else see it?
Ruviana
@rikyrah: Can we wait a little? I need some time to recover from the real thing!
The Other Chuck
Is the FBI going to order him to surrender this Wessel?
MattF
@germy: I get an intercalated ad from agorafinancial:
And no, I didn’t click on the link.
Chris
@dmsilev:
“The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense.”
– Tom Clancy
Matt McIrvin
@germy: The grifting of nascent goldbugs with politically charged ads about the imminent economic collapse has been going on for years and years. Citing Ron Paul is pretty common.
Martha from Augusta
@Chris: As part of its review of Hillary’s emails, the NSA has retroactively classified Mr. Clancy’s quote. Please destroy your computer IAW NSA standards.
D58826
@Martha from Augusta:
snark obviously
http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/hillary-releases-twenty-thousand-spam-e-mails-from-old-navy
germy
@MattF: I NEVER click those links. I always assume the RWNJ websites are full of malware.
germy
@Matt McIrvin:
[Targeted demographic oldster complaining to his wife]: “Has the fucking world ended yet? I’m getting impatient here.”
Kay
Republicans talked about getting rid of the grifters after they lost in 2012. There were a couple of outraged op-eds from Republicans talking about how they were fleecing their base. The things is, they did nothing. What can they do? They’d have to be issuing warnings every 60 seconds on everyone from Palin to Huckabee to Giuliani. Two governors and a mayor, and one was a VP candidate. It’s not the fringe. It’s eating off limbs. Their ideology forbids any kind of regulation, so they can’t go the campaign reform route.
It’s systemic. It won’t end until they kill the host.
The Other Chuck
@Kay: Couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch. Thing is they’re already doing lots of damage even when they lose. The body generally can’t survive if 27% of it is poisoned.
germy
@Kay:
And what a fine day that will be.
catclub
@germy:
I bet Will Ferrell from Anchorman would do a pretty good Trump.
catclub
@germy:
I have AdBlock. I need to send Cole a check.
msdc
And DougJ just used that Gatsby quote like a week ago. Too soon, DougJ! Too soon.
Dork
/scans story, sees emails involved, but nothing about Hillary
Nope, FBI is not interested.
rikyrah
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
You have never lied.
This is a real life example:
Truth is stranger than fiction.
Hopefully, someone other than a lame ass Villager will do the due diligence and write the book on this.
Matt McIrvin
@germy: I loved the moment on “Gravity Falls” when Bill Cypher, the deceitful extradimensional demon who is the cartoon’s prime villain, vanishes while shouting “Reality is an illusion! The universe is a hologram! Buy gold! BYYYEEEE!!!!”
Peale
@Kay: I’m still not certain why it isn’t more prevalent for Dems. I’m sure it exists, but it seems like whenever more than three Republicans gather together, one of them will be fleecing the other two. It’s not like Dems don’t have SuperPACs or people who don’t want to make money and don’t care about how they do it.
Peale
@Dork: I am calling today for a special prosecutor to look into GOP fundraising schemers and their ties to the RNC. I won’t stop until we find out why Paul Ryan didn’t do anything.
NotMax
@CONGRATULATIONS!
Sadly, Paddy Chayefsky is dead.
bystander
@Kay:
I pray for a mercifully swift demise.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
It’s what Josh Marshall has called the “nonsense debt“. They’ve been lying to the base for so long that it’s almost impossible to be part of the party establishment without being a charlatan and grifter on at least some scale. They can’t draw a bright line against any kind of grift because they’d have no party left, and they can’t draw a fuzzy line because it’s unenforceable.
cokane
lol appreciate this link! just goes to show that R’s from Trumpers to anti-Trumpers are simply unequipped to detect bullshit
shomi
The fact red states are remaining red verifies what I already knew. Repubs could nominate a dish cloth or sack of rocks and red states would still vote for them. It’s tribal.
Eric U.
@rikyrah: miniseries? I think you could stretch a couple of years of shows out of it. Might have to move on from Trump at some point. “The candidates”
MomSense
This whole thing makes me want to watch the kitten sneaking into be with the puppy video again.
aimai
@rikyrah: But who would believe it?
germy
catclub
@MomSense: It looked to me that the kitten didn’t mind being there, but it was not as great as the kitten had hoped.
Enhanced Voting Techinques
Just look at Trump’s former campaign manger, it would only be shocking if this kind of cheesy dirty tricks weren’t happening.
VOR
@Chris: Mark Twain made that observation decades before Tom Clancy.
aimai
@MattF: That, to me, is one of the weirder things ever. I mean–in ordinary, real life, do people substitute a “gift certificate” for an actual dinner out? With people who they seem to be proposing to do business with? Wining and dining usually involves more schmoozing. The gift certificate thing was utterly, utterly, weird and counter-reality to me.
aimai
@germy: I See Grifters. The Trump Era version of The Sixth Sense.
germy
Is he sick or just sad?
hovercraft
@rikyrah:
OT, but I thought of you as I read this from Vox
Poll: White people aren’t exactly woke, but they are now slightly less comatose about racism
As black people report less unfair treatment, white people are more likely to acknowledge it.
That’s the headline from the piece, it uses Gallop, so make of it what you will.
germy
Kay
@Peale:
I think it’s ideological. They’re anti-regulatory and they have a near-religious belief in markets. The grifters should have been pushed out by operation of market theory. I can’t prove it but IMO that actually happened (to a certain extent) in the Obama campaign. There were a lot of grifters in and around the 2004 Kerry campaign. Obama kind of cleaned house. It has to be done periodically, I guess.
The GOP itself is a market failure :)
D58826
@germy: probably only time I hope she is right
germy
Should be …. uh… interesting.
MattF
@germy: Given the lies about Hilz’s health, I vote for sick.
Dork
@germy: A bit surprising, b/c you’d think he’d book the Trump Tower in Vegas and “bill” the “facility” $10 million or so for the rally. Because it would be sooooo classy and yooge.
Kay
@germy:
This week was supposed to be about immigration. He may be avoiding the fact that he now supports Obama’s enforcement approach.
Next week is education. I can’t bear that, honestly, so let’s hope they’re all scurrying around wondering how to finesse his giant betrayal of his racist base.
germy
What did Hannity know about the office sexual harassment culture? Inquiring minds need to know.
Andrea Tantaros Sues Fox News, Claiming Retaliation for Reporting Sexual Harassment
(She was harassed by O’Reilly and a few other on-air men)
Brachiator
@The Other Chuck:
I saw what you did there. Very good, Mr Chekov.
scav
@germy: Rather enjoying the optics blindness of repeatedly canceling speeches but not fundraising — or is that just his radical truth-telling? It’s all about the cash and not the actual plans for governance, let alone the actual governing. No reason to show up for the latter, especially given the multiple day-exhaustion caused by showing up in Louisiana for a photo-op. (Also, could that be even the projected fundraising receipts in OR weren’t up to snuff? A sudden onset of mark-deficiency? Is that even possible in these here U-nighted States?)
hovercraft
@germy:
I think she has that backwards, if he wins, after all the naysayers and predictions of doom, he will have shown the world that he knows better than everyone, and he will never ever listen to anyone other than Steve Bannon. You think you’ve seen Trump being Trump? He will have won his way and all will have to bow down before him, especially the GOP. His wrath against all who were against him will know no limits, he will destroy all who stood in his way regardless of the consequences.
Kay
@MattF:
I read Trump supporters nasty comments about Clinton’s appearance, and I am once again struck that it doesn’t matter how horrible a man looks when he attacks a woman for how she looks. You would think he was this perfect physical specimen reading them. I also think he’s lying about his height.
Brachiator
@germy:
Trump has the Zika virus. It’s really bad.
At least, that’s what I’ve heard.
gene108
@Kay:
As long as the billionaires have open checkbooks to underwrite a good chunk of the operations and they keep winning down ballot races, there’s no reason to stop.
The right-wing conservative movement has been a grifting operation for at least 35 years, when they discovered the power of direct mail notices begging for money to stop evil liberals.
I think it’s a symbiotic relationship at this point. The grifting is needed to keep the Republican Party alive, because without it, all they have to stand on are their policies and ideas. And their policies and ideas are sorely lacking any real world efficacy with regards to providing positive outcomes for most Americans.
cmorenc
The particular federal pen in North Carolina where Wessel is now incarcerated to begin (early) serving his 55-month sentence is in Butner, NC, just over 20 miles north of my house in Raleigh – and a couple of times each season, I get assigned to referee high school soccer games at a field in Butner that takes me within sight of that prison along my route to and from the field. I cannot help but think about some of the notorious folks in there within long shouting distance as I go by – Bernie Madoff, John Hinkley (though he is recently out) and now Wessel. I’m sure other notables are in there too, but Madoff and Hinkley were always the two at the top of my mind in passing, and now Wessel.
hovercraft
@germy:
Apparently they can’t decide how to “pivot” on immigration, they need to, but this has been the cornerstone of his bases support. So how do you moderate in plane sight without the natives howling. Even the hint of a softer gentler immigration stance over the weekend elicited howls. The outreach to black voters was seen as what it was, so they accepted that, but any hint that you’re gonna let all these brown people stay is intolerable.
scav
@Brachiator: Can’t believe everything you hear on the internet. Think about it. What’s left of the grey matter to shrink? In other words, how could we tell?
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@catclub: I’ve had kittens. Very few things turn out as well as they hoped.
shomi
Can’t be bothered to read annoying comments here but no doubt there is obsession over todays media meme that “the election is tightening”. Lol
As if the media wasn’t going to report this anyways no matter how many polls they have to take before they can spin that in some way from just one poll somewhere.
dmsilev
@Brachiator: He has the special ‘small hands’ variant of Zika.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
We have been immersed, saturated in presidential campaigning for, what, a year or more? Waiting for Jeb! to finally declare seems like forever ago. Sleepy Ben, Snarlin’ iCarly seem like part of another life almost.
Do any of you ever need to step away from it, to take a week off from All Things Trump? I am so weary of fretting polls, wishing supposed journalists would challenge the diarrhea-like stream of lies from supporters and spokes-ninnies. I will be glad when it’s done. Of course, it would be a pipe dream to hope Republicans would truly purge their toxic deadwood so future elections aren’t so bad.
dmsilev
@germy:
A trip to Louisiana on the 18th is the reason for canceling a trip to Portland nearly 2 weeks later? Do they actually expect anyone to believe that? What’s worse is that the campaign either was unable to or couldn’t be bothered to come up with even some vaguely plausible bullshit.
Kay
@shomi:
I don’t believe the 3rd party numbers- Johnson. More Republicans will come home to Trump. He’s not going to stay at 77% of GOP or whatever. They just need the tiniest nudge to get in line- they want to vote for him. All they need is more Clinton hate or the smallest move from Trump in a rational direction.
sinnedbackwards
@Matt McIrvin: If you bought late last year at, say, $1055, you could sell today at a more than 25% profit, which annualizes to almost 35%. After taxes, not too bad. But if you held out to buy at $1050, your greediness loses out, cause you missed the reversal. Why only people who can afford to lose should gamble.
MattF
@Kay: Default assumption is that he lies about everything.
burnspbesq
Please tell me it’s April Fools Day and this is a spoof.
Baraka Calls Obama an Uncle Tom
Kay
@shomi:
I’d like to see what happens to the polls if you put 90% or better of Republicans in Trump’s column, because that’s where they’ll end up. Clinton still has an edge because she’s ahead of him in persuading “independents” but it will get closer.
germy
@hovercraft:
And that there is the dilemma. How to sound “reasonable” without pissing off the assholes who devoured all the red meat you tossed them? They certainly don’t want your broccoli.
@Brachiator:
But what mosquito would bite him? Surely they have some self respect.
@scav:
I really think he’s getting tired. This is the most work he’s had to do in 50 years.
@Kay:
Never in a million years could he admit that.
Kay (not the front-pager)
@germy: He doesn’t have the strength or the stamina to attend all these rallies with all these little people. He has a well-documented phobia about germs, so maybe his mental health is failing. He only has the stamina for small groups of rich people with checkbooks, where he can be propped up with pillows.
Just google Trump crazy! /S
MattF
@Matt McIrvin: Well, gold is a commodity. Old Wall Street joke:
Q: How do you make a small fortune in commodities?
A: Start with a large fortune.
MomSense
@catclub:
Puppies are just so unpredictable! I know how the kitten feels. Just spent $80 on a trainer to help us humans modify our behavior so that our dog doesn’t have to resort to stealing our high value items and holding them hostage for cheese. She wants good cheese, too. No more crappy American slices. Aged, sharp cheddar or the stinky stuff.
Brachiator
@germy:
But if Trump wins, ‘no hope’ for GOP’s future”
It’s the Kobayashi Maru. The ultimate no-win situation for the Republicans.
germy
@dmsilev:
His campaign slogan.
The Other Chuck
@germy: Ahh, the sweet salty tears of my enemies.
germy
@Brachiator:
We need Kirk, but he’s too busy (at the age of 85).
germy
@The Other Chuck:
Take small sips! Pace yourself. If I drink too much of them I get sick to my stomach…
Brachiator
@burnspbesq:
Old news. And Cornell West beat Baraka to this long ago.
To lunatic fringe black progressives , Obama is inauthentic.
JPL
@dmsilev: Is it possible that someone asked him a few policy questions, and realized that he needed prep for the September 7th forum? That’s what I thought yesterday, when I saw the cancellations.
Kay
@Peale:
systemic:
The grifters are the Party and the Party is the grifters.
El Caganer
Steven Wessel: “We’re the Fauxristocrats!”
Kay (not the front-pager)
@Brachiator: @Brachiator: This is exactly what my son texted me last week! I’m an old (and not as nerdy as him) so I had to look up Kobayashi Maru, but yes, it is.
JPL
@Kay: The comments about O’Reilly sound similar, to the lawsuit another worker filed against him years ago.
burnspbesq
@shomi:
We figured out quite some time ago that y’all are clueless and in love with the sound of your own voice. You really aren’t required to provide additional evidence every day.
Peale
@Brachiator: Right wingers aren’t the only ones who have trouble appealing to African American voters in ways that aren’t really appeals to white voters.
Kay
@JPL:
I never read about that but I remember the loofah.
Uh, oh. The dopes figured this out:
Mandalay
@MattF:
Well yes, but she is hardly helping herself….
Neither Trump nor Clinton are being open and transparent about their health. Sure Trump is the worst offender, but Clinton deserves all the smearing she’s getting as long as she chooses to take such an evasive and childish attitude about disclosing her health data.
We need legislation forcing party nominees for president to fully disclose details about their health and their taxes – revealing this information should cease to be optional.
Amir Khalid
@burnspbesq:
Alas, it’s no spoof. Ajamu Baraka is a Green party candidate i.e. from another plane of reality.
Peale
@Mandalay: So what is it you want to know?
Calouste
@Peale:
Did you miss the Bernie Sanders campaign? Of course Sanders himself didn’t realize the grift opportunities until later, but Weaver and specially former Yanukovich* advisor Tad Devine were in it for the grift from the beginning.
*) Yeah, that’s the same Russia-backed former Ukrainian despot that Paul Manafort worked for at the same time.
scav
@germy: He’s struggling out his feathered bed of exhaustion to the sweet siren jingle of cash in two other examples. Only OR is not worth the pretense.
Brachiator
@Kay:
Once again, we can quote the wisdom of Star Trek. From the Mirror Mirror episode.
Ultimately, Trump is unstable and wildly ego driven. He can only pretend to be rational for a short time.
Republicans have to ask themselves whether they really want an ignorant, unprincipled wild man subject to all kinds of fits and tantrums in the White House as their president?
Chyron HR
@germy:
Ha ha, you can’t fool me! Austin is in TEXAS!
Eric
@Chyron HR: I thought it said trump and autism. Which is not that far off.
germy
But we knew that.
germy
@Kay:
Not Scott Brown!!!
Actually it makes perfect sense. Scott: “She had those hot legs and talked that foxnews bullshit; I just assumed she’d be down.”
Miss Bianca
@Mandalay: Yeah, plus the long-form birth certificates. You know, let’s be thorough.
ETA: Because, you know, when a political opponent notorious for rodent screwage decides to make an issue out of something, that means there’s a real issue there. Right?
germy
@Chyron HR: Maybe Betty Cracker or Doug! will devote a thread to it.
Brachiator
@Peale:
In many ways, the arguments here of people like Baraka and Cornell West have nothing to do with white people.
Mandalay
@Peale:
It’s tricky. I don’t want or need all of the all of the gisly details on the health of any candidate, but I also don’t want someone who is a ticking time bomb to become our president.
Clinton is 68 and Trump is 70. Nobody at that age has no health issues. The candidates should have their health reviewed by some independent party, and any concerns should be disclosed so that voters can make our own judgement. You don’t get to pick your doctor to assess your health if you are being recruited as (say) a soldier or a footballer or a pilot. Yet if you want to become president you can choose your doctor, and then selectively reveal what that doctor finds? It absurd, and the process needs to change.
Brachiator
@Kay:
A man who’s tall and who has a relatively full head of hair has an advantage over a shorter, balder man. And Chris Christie was borderline acceptable to some.
But your larger point stands.
Mandalay
@Miss Bianca:
You choose to make a joke about disclosing state of the health of our next president? The current process is absurd and hopelessly inadequate, and the health of the candidates is potentially far more important than undisclosed paid speeches or tax returns.
shomi
Lol, the media echo chamber tried to gin up a meme today that “the polls are tightening, Trump gaining traction blah blah whaever yawn”
Then CNN pee’d in their cornflakes. Clinton up by double digits in Virginia. Haha!
As soon as I add a link this retarded website blocks it for moderation and since moderation is slim to non-existant I won’t bother. Google it.
MattF
@Mandalay: True enough, and that would resolve the current issues. But right now, 1) Trump and his cohort are simply and flatly lying about HRC’s health and 2) the evidence offered by Trump about his own health is ridiculous. There’s an asymmetry in the HRC/health and the Trump/health news, and that’s the problem now.
aimai
@Mandalay: That’s just false. She has released a full doctor’s work up and much about her health was investigated and made public when she had the fainting incident while she was SOS. Any person can get sick or fall ill during the next eight years. But a quick look at HRC’s schedule and her sheer endurance and ability to think on her feet and interact with the public after hours of grueling campaigning would indicate that she is not suffering from any kind of neurological or other health problem that warrants this kind of concern trolling. Except that its concern trolling so I guess that is reason enough.
Miss Bianca
@Mandalay: No, I choose to make a joke about *you*. You and your concern-trolling are the joke, here. Not HRC, not her health. You.
aimai
@Mandalay: Oh no! A Joke! Why I never.
shomi
The media echo chamber tried to gin up a meme today that “the polls are tightening, Trump gaining traction blah blah whatever yawn”
Then CNN pee’d in their cornflakes. Clinton up by double digits in Virginia according to a WaPo poll that just came out. That’s significant because Virginia is supposed to be a battleground state. Axelrod says that’s unprecedented in recent history. He says a lot of other states that should not be in play actually are.
As soon as I add a link this retarded website blocks it for moderation. Since moderation is slim to non-existant I won’t bother. Google it.
ET
@Mike E: sometimes familiarity does breed contempt.
I have always wondered if a lot of Trump support was based on a very superficial understanding of who he was. He portrays himself as a straight talker and big/successful businessman. Americans say they like straight talk and I don’t think that is incorrect, but many also don’t feel you have to gratuitously go after people. I think they are seeing someone who can’t not say anything.
As for the business acumen, many Americans seem to feel that business always make the best choices, they make them with deliberation after doing due diligence and information gathering. That this is not always the case is being demonstrated by how Trump is running his campaign.
I do expect a lot Republicans to still vote for him.
Mandalay
@MattF:
Probably so, but nothing is stopping Clinton from having a doctor review her health and publish the results. What the Trump team is doing may be dirty pool, but the ball is in her court now. She has hardly been forthcoming about her health so far, so I have zero sympathy for her when she says she swill only reveal more if Trump does. Screw that lame argument. Reveal more because it is the right thing to do.
And by doing that she will put massive pressure on Trump to reveal more details about his health.
JMG
@Kay: As far as I can tell and I’ve been studying the comparisons within polls of a multi-candidate race vs. plain old Trump-Clinton very carefully, at this point Clinton’s leaking more respondents into Johnson’s total than Trump is. It’s about a 5-4 ratio overall. So Johnson may be as much of a gateway drug for Republicans who’ll end up voting for Clinton as he is anything else.
OzarkHillbilly
@Mandalay:
There’s this little thing known as Doctor/patient confidentiality that gets in the of that. Your concerns are real, but it still comes down to trusting the candidate.
Miss Bianca
@Mandalay: Oh, like releasing her tax records put the massive pressure on Trump to do the same? With…I’m sorry, what was the result again? Oh, *nothing*, that’s right!
ETA: You don’t get it because you don’t want to get it – because, in fact, *you* are one of the ones who enjoy the pile-on. Nothing Clinton does, or doesn’t do, is ever going to be enough for people to stop picking at her. Similarly, nothing Trump does, or doesn’t do, is ever going to be enough for people *not* to make excuses for him.
JPL
@Mandalay: It’s leverage. She released her tax returns, and he didn’t. I haven’t
read the document that she released about her health, but I did hear it was more extensive than his two paragraph note.
Brachiator
@Mandalay:
Or not.
inventor
@Mandalay: Boy howdy! You are really, really concerned!
BR
@JMG:
I’m still hoping / betting for a 50 / 40 / 8 / 2 national vote split for Clinton / Trump / Johnson / Stein. I think getting Clinton from 47 to 50, which is what I think the polls will show, will be up to us doing serious organizing.
scav
As though there were fucking guarantees about the future health of individuals.
Peale
@JPL: And hers wasn’t forged using the name of a doctor who died six years ago. And he got a complete pass on that. Its not just that his disclosure was inadequate. It was forged. He is clearly got issues to hide.
Nope. She’s disclosed enough.
amk
@Mandalay:
And if she doesn’t jump that particular hoop for you?
Amir Khalid
@Mandalay:
Hillary has withstood the rigours of campaigning — constant travel, long hours, pujblic appearances almost every day — for well over a year now without any apparent sign of fatigue or loss of concentration. It would seem a sign that she’s physically robust enough to run for and serve as president.
OzarkHillbilly
@Mandalay:
Reveal more because the GOP doesn’t have enough ammo?
JMG
I am still surprised Trump’s doctor statement wasn’t signed Sincerely, Donald’s Mother.
Trollhattan
@germy: The heck does that even mean? Not to mention low-hanging fruit. “If [fill in blank, e.g., gators invade a Florida golf course, McDonald’s offers a ‘healthier’ kids menu, the pope performs a mass…] no hope for GOP’s future.”
Sons of the Harpy called, they want their harpy back from Coulter.
J R in WV
@burnspbesq:
No, no! It’s real, and he’s sticking to his guns on it…
Total krapuloid. Just blow off any chance that any people of color will ever vote for your org. ever. Ever! The first black president, he’s an Uncle Tom!@ Fuqin amazing!
If you did that on West Wing you would be fired when you showed the work to anyone else.
bluefish
The Wessel thingie above sounds like the long lost, much older brother of David O. Russell’s “American Hustle.” Good luck, kid guys. Wake me up when it stops getting weirder by the day.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
Mammon worshipers lack a spiritual commitment to keeping money changers out of the temple.
JPL
Did the Don have his phone taken away again? President Obama arrived in Louisiana and is wearing Khaki’s. I’m expecting a tweet suggesting he doesn’t look presidential.
Brachiator
@BR:
The national vote is just not that important, except maybe for some bragging rights, and as an indirect reflection of how well you want Clinton to do in key states.
one_particular_harbour, fka Botsplainer
@Mandalay:
Your concerns are noted.
Trollhattan
@Mandalay:
Ha-ha-ha-ha, funniest thing I’ve read today!
BR
@JMG:
I recall reading recently that the doctor Trump supposedly got his letter from died several years ago. So there’s something really fishy about his health letter. I don’t think anyone has been able to track him down, not that the press is trying very hard.
one_particular_harbour, fka Botsplainer
@JPL:
No suit coat, opaque tie or flag pin? Not presidential! Sad!
Trollhattan
@JPL:
Captain Dockers is the Marvel hero we’ve been waiting for.
Punchy
No, they dont. But doing so gets them ~3 SCOTUS justices, which cements in bans on abortion, gay marriage, keeps CU and HobLobs in place, and pretty much every other socially conservative position they want. I’d say it would solidify this country as a theocracy.
Ergo, they’ll take him. They’d take a rabid monkey with 1 leg and early-onset CTE if they could first train him to pull the Pryor and Cruz buttons on his SCOTUS nominations.
SiubhanDuinne
@rikyrah:
These days, IMO, Jane Mayer (Dark Money, most recently, and writer of long-form pieces for The New Yorker) is one of the best investigative reporters around. I’d love to see her tackle the entirety of the Trump campaign as her next book.
rikyrah
@burnspbesq:
I more than believe this is real.
BR
@Brachiator:
The national vote is important because of Trump’s nonsense attempts to deligitimize the election. We need to run up the score in the popular vote so that Clinton gets a majority, strengthening both the media and sane GOPers ability to say that the election was fair and Clinton has the will of the majority. (I know not many of the GOP will do this, but they will if they have to, if Trump tries to cry foul.)
Chyron HR
@Mandalay:
I know, right? She hasn’t even confessed to having Down Syndrome yet!
J R in WV
@Mandalay:
So disabled folks are qualified to be president because their health is generally poorer than able folks? FDR flunking your test, along with JFK>? nah! do’nna think so.
singfoom
@BR:
As much as I agree with you, I don’t think running up the score will have any affect on the perception of the “rigged” system held by Drumpf supporters. The idea of “voter fraud” has, despite the statistics that you can trot out, been a mainstay of the Republicans (even the ‘sane’ ones) for the last decade.
IMHO, running up the score will just confirm the Drumpfkins belief that it’s rigged. In fact, the higher the difference, the more some will believe it is rigged. That’s why Drumpf’s “rigged” comments are so fucking dangerous. Makes me want a bunker for election day.
glory b
@burnspbesq: No, and he did it more than once!
More proof, as if we need it, that the Green Party isn’t serious about this (and are probably Republican plants).
OzarkHillbilly
@BR:
Ummmm, which GOP are you speaking of, America’s GOP? Cause that GOP doesn’t have to do a damn thing outside of oppose any DEM policy no matter how sensible it might be.
Punchy
Ha ha! You’re a very funny wo/man! As if “published results”—assuming they showed good health–would be taken as fact with the wingers. The doctor certainly voted “D” in some election somewhere (or else has granite countertops, or once helped a gay patient), thus proving he’s in deep cahoots with the Clinton Foundation, probably using illegally laundered money to fund hippo–finch hybrids using aborted human stem cells, and thus willing to publish Clinton’s good health, despite the fact that she used a Kleenex 11 days ago.
JPL
@J R in WV: Maybe Donald should have a psychiatrist release a report on the state of his mental health.
Mike J
JMG
Winning by as much as possible is always the goal. As for the Trump “rigged” claims, the hell with those who believe ’em. Scoreboard! More seriously, all but the most intense/demented partisans of either side are always just damned glad the election is over, period. Trying to extend it for no cause would not be popular. Hell, Gore was never more popular in 2000 than the day after his concession speech.
Peale
@Mike J: The fact that they thought they could ask is enough though! It was a culture of people thinking they could ask!
sukabi
@germy: speech still being modified? What’s wrong, did they run out of racism red, white hot hate and belligerent blue in their box of crayons?
OzarkHillbilly
@srv:
Yes, how dare they point out that a president was showing signs of dementia. That was soooooo uncool.
Terry chay
@Mandalay: Well there is the usual TMI health report of Hillary out there already. So that’s why someone asked what else do you want to know? Trump’s OTOH is obviously fraudulent other than perhaps the part that said his tests came back “positive” :-D.
The mistake you are making is to believe that Clinton is refusing to release more health data because she has something to hide. This is similar to thinking that because she never released her paid speech transcripts they must have said something other than the usual pablum.
In the latter case, the reason is that nobody releases paid speech transcripts and if she did, it would create an awkward precedent for all Democrats going forward, not just her. Everything she has done in private as a private citizen would then be open to demands of public scrutiny.
In the former case, it is this “Quid pro quo” of the Trump offer that has no quo (whether it is Trump’s promise to release his taxes if Obama releases his birth certificate, or his promise to attend a debate if the networks donate money, or any of a zillion others which he has never followed through with). That action to get your mark to do an action and then recind your end is a form of control Trump has exercised throughout his career. If she released any more records she’d be falling for a trap. The Bernie campaign fell for this during the end of the primary much to their embarrassment, the Clinton campaign is too smart so they flipped it. Notice how they demand Trump release an actual health report, yet promise nothing in return? Because they know, unlike Trump, if they make a Quid pro quo, they’d be held to it.
Origuy
@BR:
You’re right that there’s a lot fishy about that letter, but the doctor who signed it is the son of the doctor who died. They were in the same practice. Six years is a long time to leave your dad on the letterhead, though.
inventor
@srv: Do you practice Reagan’s “States Rights” speech from 1980 in Philadelphia, Mississippi in front of your mirror? Or do you go all-in and mainline Alexander Stephens “Cornerstone” speech?
gwangung
@Brachiator: A fair amount of BLM protestors are very unhappy with Obama’s administration for not doing anything about Ferguson and other oppressive police departments.
It’s not something I can blame them for.
germy
@inventor:
there is no reflection.
Althea the Bootstrapwoman
OT, but just fyi, gawker dot com shut down operations for good at 5:33 pm yesterday.
catclub
@SiubhanDuinne:
With the Kochs, it is well known that they are in it for the long term. So those articles are useful.
Assuming Trump loses, there may be less reason to investigate. Although even as I type, the grifting story- and where those operators go next, should be interesting.
Mnemosyne
@gwangung:
FWIW, St. Louis County — including Ferguson — is now under a DOJ consent decree. This is the same process that forced reform at the LAPD. It’s not a fast process, but it tends to work.
Matt McIrvin
@MattF: What makes it much scammier is that a lot of these outfits aren’t even really selling gold as a commodity: they’re not hawking bullion, they’re hawking numismatic issues of gold coins that are marked way up over the metallic value. Which defeats the whole purpose of using gold as some kind of doomsday hedge.
catclub
@gwangung:
and also I can find on the daily stormer that he encouraged angry black mobs to attack the police. And he used a teleprompter to do it.
OzarkHillbilly
@gwangung:
Ummmm…. They DID do something about the Ferguson police department. And others too.
Kay
I would be happy if this election made VA part of the states Republicans can’t win. I say that because I’m fairly confident a lot of influential DC Republicans live there :)
Remember ’08? I thought Pat Buchanan was going to start carrying around a musket. He was ALL upset.
? Martin
@JPL: “Mr. Trumps brain is astonishingly excellent. If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be most the sensible individual ever elected to the presidency.”
BR
@OzarkHillbilly:
I don’t expect them to be sane, but I would expect at a minimum folks like McCain to say that the election was fair and Trump lost.
gwangung
@OzarkHillbilly: I think the point is that the process is slow, incomplete and not likely to help in getting Ferguson residents out of the hole they are now in.
In the meantime, you have Baltimore, Cleveland, et al, ongoing, with massive resistance from the police to the tiniest bit of reform (even in blue areas like Seattle), and any aid from the establishment is little and long and coming.
OzarkHillbilly
@Mnemosyne: Not STL county, just Ferguson. There may be other municipalities in STL county under DOJ consent decrees, but not that I know of.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Mnemosyne: That is really good news. It made a world of difference in Los Angeles.
Mnemosyne
@OzarkHillbilly:
Whoops! Sorry, misread the story.
OzarkHillbilly
@BR: Ever the dreamer, you are. ;-)
indycat32
@Mandalay: I’m 67 and have no health issues.
Mnemosyne
@gwangung:
It would go a lot faster if Congress would pass legislation rather than making the DOJ grind out consent decrees for each individual city. But I guess it’s easier for “activists” to bitch than to vote.
BR
@OzarkHillbilly:
Just that McCain and folks like him never liked Trump and will be happy when he loses.
Brachiator
@BR:
Bullshit. Trump can prattle all he wants about the election. And I would like to see a large GOTV effort. Put the president is not elected based on national vote totals.
Trump can cry whatever nonsense he wants. All that matters is that he loses, and that Clinton gets the electoral votes she needs.
What the media says does not matter. What the GOP says does not matter (and the GOP will play their obstructionist games even if Clinton wins every state and 99.99 percent of the vote).
Get out the vote. The rest is commentary.
catclub
@Terry chay:
catclub
@Brachiator:
The fact that the right wing Jewish magazine is named Commentary always gives me a smile when I read this – or the Rabbi’s advice.
Hillel replies, “That which is hateful to you, do not unto another: This is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary”
Ben Cisco
@burnspbesq: It’s true.
rikyrah
@Kay (not the front-pager):
The contempt he has for them is absolutely REAL, and if you look at the pictures of the rallies, it’s obvious.
gwangung
@Mnemosyne: Gonna need help uprooting the Freedom Caucus assholes that white voters in other gerrymandered districts are voting in….
The Other Chuck
@Matt McIrvin: Grift has been one of the prime motivations in hawking commodities, especially gold, since at least 1849. Working as designed.
Mnemosyne
@gwangung:
I’m happy to help. I just get annoyed with people who misdiagnose the actual problem, and it’s even more annoying when people (not you) who are ostensibly on the same side don’t seem to understand that the president is not a dictator and fixing our police problem is going to take the efforts of local, state, AND federal government.
Calling the president an “Uncle Tom,” not only does jack shit to get you towards that goal, it pisses off the people who want to try and help you. Someone that clueless doesn’t get a dime of my money or a minute of my time, because they clearly don’t know WTF they’re doing.
The Other Chuck
@BR: Trump has made enough enemies that there will be plenty of mainstream Republicans who will not only say Trump lost fair and square, but that he entirely deserved to lose.
And by “plenty” I mean zero who will actually be on teevee. Conflict pays the bills in cable-news-land.
Mike J
@Mnemosyne:
Seattle cops have flat out said they won’t go along with any reforms under consent decree unless they get more money.
Mnemosyne
@gwangung:
And in happier news filed under “didn’t see this coming,” Snoop Dogg is apparently doing really good work to help improve community relationships between the LAPD and local citizens.
hovercraft
@Mike J:
Exactly, and last time I checked even if they got a meeting, unless there was an explicit “i will give you $32 million in exchange for X'” there is no quid pro quo. Sadly for them as one of the knuckleheads on Morning Joe pointed out, the Supreme Courts vacating of Gov Bob McDonell’s conviction means that basically someone would have to be dumb enough to not only be that explicit, but also to write it down or record it. So what exactly is the point of appointing a Special Prosecutor, other than to embarrass the Clintons? Politics is all about gaining access by whatever means necessary, if you want to clean it up, do so for everyone, trying to gin this up only riles your base, for the rest of us we say what else is new?
The Other Chuck
@Mike J: Won’t comply with a consent decree? That’s an awfully roundabout way to say “I quit”. Let ’em defy it then.
Brachiator
@gwangung:
The BLM protestors have a right to their anger. I don’t know what that has to do with Green Party stupidity.
Mnemosyne
@Mike J:
Well, given that following a consent decree is legally required, I hope they have new jobs lined up.
Kay
Maybe Trumpster is still sliding?
I’ll be happy if Republican-leaners don’t actually give in and vote for Trump but I won’t believe it until I see it.
OzarkHillbilly
@gwangung:
It’s always slow and never complete, because perfection is unacheivable. And some people want their magic ponies too.
Meanwhile, on the ground in STL** real change is happening. I was listening to the local NPR program yesterday and Jennifer Joyce***, the retiring long time STL city district attorney was on. She said a # of things that pointed to an assertiveness by the young local BLM folks that is very encouraging, noting among other things how many of them have gotten involved in local politics at the most basic level (such as coming to ward committee meetings and running for positions on the committees) as well as running for alderman, state reps, etc. She noted that this was a real change from just a few years ago when only older people were showing up for these thankless tasks.
Ferguson itself has had a change in the makeup of their board of alderman as it is now majority black (4-2 IIRC), their Police chief is black, and they have had a large turnover in their police force.****
It takes time.
**I was a long time resident of STL and still take great interest in how things are there.
***Jennifer Joyce is being replaced by Kimberly Gardner, a black women, an historic first
**** A little over a year ago I was at my brother’s house for a celebration. (they live in north STL county) and Ferguson came up. There was lot of victim blaming going around the table concerning Michael Brown and I said as much and stated also that how is it OK that a shop lifter got killed? that no matter how you cut it, that was f’d up. Argument got loud, yadayadayada until my SIL told us all to knock it off.
My niece had just gotten married but I did not know that it was to a Ferguson cop. My wife and I did not get invited to their usual XMas shindig, and I just recently confirmed why. It’s OK, I love ’em all. They know I can be a good boy so I figure the problem is the SonIL can’t be.
aimai
@Mnemosyne: They don’t want your money, though. Or your support. They are all about the same thing that ISIS is–eliminating the “gray zone” in which people can feel comfortable working together across racial or ethnic or other divides. They want to force a situation in which no African American politician can be a politician because to do that is seen as compromising their blackness–and they want to force white allies to feel afraid to support congenial/skilled/effective AA politicians for fear of being called allies of “uncle toms” and not allies full stop. Its all about making the position of Obama and other effective politicians seem compromised and corrupt.
Mike J
@The Other Chuck: Police union has a contract.
Kay (not the front-pager)
@Peale: The note from Trump’s doctor did not even sound like it was written by someone for whom English is their native language.
The doctors are father and son. I believe it was he father who died 6 years ago. However, pictures I’ve seen of the younger doctor make him appear to be, shall we say, less than professional. He looks like a guy who fell deep into drug abuse or debilitating mental illness and only holds onto his license because he doesn’t use it.
In other words, he may or may not have signed the letter, but regardless it is not a dependable reference.
schrodinger's cat
Bet Trump would flunk the naturalization test that you need to take and pass to become a citizen and the medical exam that you need to undergo when you submit your application to become a permanent resident.
gwangung
@Brachiator: One of the basics of politics is forming alliances with people who’ll listen to you. There’s a large segment of progressive POCs who are gravitating to the Green Party because of that.
And I do want to remind people that complacency on this issue is not something liberals can afford.
hovercraft
@BR:
McCain may be even more embittered if he gets swept out with Trump. He is in danger of losing, he’s not yet in Ayotte territory but the race is way too close for comfort. Apparently McCain does not want to retire because both his father and grandfather died within months of retiring. So if he loses expect him to unleash holy hell on Trump.
Brachiator
@catclub:
I always see it as taking the quote back from any association with the magazine.
Chyron HR
@Kay:
NEW POLL SHOWS TRUMP LEADING CLINTON–SCARED YET, LIBS?
The Lodger
@Brachiator: No, that’s Pence.
Explains the size of his head.
Mnemosyne
@aimai:
IIRC, that’s what the Dallas shooting was all about — the guy was pissed off that the DPD had had some successful reforms and better community relations, so he wanted to destroy that work and make the police act like the enemy again. I don’t think he succeeded in Dallas, but his actions do seem to have convinced police departments in places like Baltimore and Seattle to double down on being assholes.
hovercraft
@Brachiator:
Harry Enten of 538 was on Chris Hayes last night, and he pointed out that over the last several elections the state polls have been more accurate than the national polls. So while the national numbers can give you a general gauge of the direction of the polls, what matters are the state polls, and an extrapolation from them is a more accurate picture of waht the final national percentages will be.
Shell
@germy: Unloading all those cartons of Play-Doh must have been exhausting.
Cacti
Whoever camp up with this ad needs a raise.
New DNC ad targets “new and improved” Trump over his hire of former Breitbart.com director to chair his campaign.
A man and a woman read headlines out loud, pulled directly from Breitbart. Some gems include:
Link
pamelabrown53
@one_particular_harbour, fka Botsplainer: #138
Heh. I think it’s amazing that President Obama can wear Dockers and mom jeans and still be such an urbane metrosexual!
James E Powell
@MattF:
Please, we need somebody to tell us so we can prepare. Tell us!
hovercraft
Corey Lewandowski has a great defense for his boss not holding rallies in black neighborhoods, it’s too dangerous. Keep f**king that chicken.
Ben Cisco
@catclub: And then threw the teleprompter at the po-lease!
The Other Chuck
@Mike J: Pretty sure a federal consent decree overrides anything in their contract. The consent decree is already there; negotiation isn’t anything that has to be entertained. They can comply, quit, or go to prison.
OzarkHillbilly
@gwangung:
FYWP ate my reply. Shorter version: It takes time and is never complete.
I lived in STL for years and follow things up there very closely. the story on the ground is things are happening and they are happening because people on the ground are making them happen. Ferguson residents aren’t asking for any body to come in and save them, they are making the changes happen themselves (the board of alderman is now majority black, 4-2 IIRC)
There are no magic ponies, just slow hard work. In STL the young folks who largely make up the local BLM get that and are doing it.
Kay (not the front-pager)
@srv: Weren’t you the guy who told me 10 months ago that I was agist and sexist for saying Bernie Sanders, at 75 when he would take office, would be too old? So now you are concerned about Clinton’s 69-year-old age???
Matt McIrvin
@hovercraft: However, state polls in some states are infrequent enough that aggregating them can give a laggy picture of where the national race is today, which is why 538 uses national polls to extrapolate short-term, day-to-day fluctuations in their model of the states. The trouble is, a lot of those fluctuations are really meaningless anyway, and people waste time fretting about them. But it gives people something dramatic to click on.
The Other Chuck
@Mnemosyne: Was that the actual stated motive of the Dallas shooter, or speculation? If the former is true, it really ought to be an object lesson in terrorism, because it’s hard to get a more purely distilled example of how terrorism works than that.
Brachiator
@gwangung:
A large segment of progressive POC is what, 6 people? They run to the Green Party not because they are listened to, but because they are equally delusional.
The Other Chuck
@hovercraft: Makes sense. The election isn’t a national plebiscite after all, it’s 50 state races (plus some territories no one ever visits).
Raven
Out of surgery so far so good!
OzarkHillbilly
@Mnemosyne: Meh, the structures of local governance in STL and STL county are beyond f’d up for historical reasons as well as the usual IGMFY ones. I don’t blame any one who is not from here for mistaken assumptions.
The Other Chuck
@Kay (not the front-pager): You’re shocked that a faithless troll like srv might be inconsistent or even hypocritical?
Mnemosyne
@gwangung:
Honestly, I’m not sure what we’re supposed to do when people turn their backs on electoral politics. One of the reasons we’re in this mess to begin with is that a bunch of liberals/leftists decided after 1968 that elections weren’t important anymore and activism was what mattered. How are we supposed to prevent a new generation from making the same stupid goddamned mistake of deciding that elections aren’t important?
Kay
@Chyron HR:
I sort of “group” Missouri with Indiana (rather than grouping Indiana w/OH and MI) so now we’ll have to see if Indiana starts to go away from Trump. That would be nice.
Ben Cisco
@Raven: Woot!
James E Powell
@Kay:
In 2012, Republican voters came home with the first debate. They were dodgy on Romney until he yelled at
that ni-clangthe president. It’s the kind of thing that Trump understands better than any of the regular Republicans.glory b
@srv: It’s time for school to start.
scav
@Raven: ! May it so continue.
Calouste
@Kay: Obama only lost Missouri by 0.13% in 2008. It swung back in 2012, probably because Obama needed to defend other states.
Considering how solid Clinton’s lead is at the moment in states like Colorado and Virginia, I think it is likely that she will make a play for Missouri.
Mnemosyne
@The Other Chuck:
Adam did a really long post on “grey zone” terrorism a couple of weeks ago where he addressed it (I think in the comments). The Dallas shooter was a black separatist. The guy in Baton Rouge was a … gah, I’m forgetting the term. Like the Bundy nut jobs.
Brachiator
@hovercraft:
The final national percentages don’t matter. They are not used to elect the president.
I can understand why people would want to see a national vote blow-out. But no one should waste time trying to use these numbers as establishing or validating a mandate. It is totally unnecessary. You win, you got mandate.
Nor will a big vote necessarily prevent Trump from making all kinds of wild claims. To expect some manner of rational thought from a birther is a waste of time.
And again, some people want polls to be some kind of affirming prophecy. This is an abuse of statistics.
OzarkHillbilly
@Mike J: One of the requirements of the Ferguson DOJ consent decree was that… wait for it…. They pay their cops better. That was in fact one of Ferguson’s major objections to the decree, said it was going to bankrupt the city.
Matt McIrvin
@Mnemosyne: “Sovereign citizen”?
hovercraft
@Raven:
Yay!!!
Kay
@James E Powell:
I’ve just heard it so many times “principled conservatives will NEVER back X” and then it’s always something policy-related “because of his position on ethanol subsidies!”
Yeah, right. Sure they won’t. They’d sell their own grandmother to win, especially w/the SCOTUS at stake.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: I’ll believe it when I see it Kay. Hillary hate is awfully strong here in Misery.
Original Lee
@srv: Aside from school starting, these summer crazes always settle down as fall approaches.
Cacti
@Calouste:
The way the race is unfolding, it looks like Hillary could have a higher EV ceiling on election day than Barry Bams did in 2008. Whether she hits it isn’t guaranteed, but the GOP having to fight rearguard actions in states like Georgia, Missouri, and Arizona is very bad for them (but good for the rest of us).
Miss Bianca
@Raven: Yay!!
sukabi
@gwangung: isn’t Seattle also under a consent decree from DOJ?
Doesn’t make things better over night
catclub
@Brachiator:
It is always helpful to be reminded that the whites in the Democratic party are much more likely to be liberal than the blacks in the Democratic party. Why? Half of the whites are in the GOP, but almost zero percent of the blacks are in the GOP.
Only in the case that: All blacks are more liberal than all whites, would that not be the case.
hovercraft
@Brachiator:
I think the only reason the national number is important, is to indicate whether a candidate is far enough ahead to overcome the gerrymander and change who controls the house. Senate candidates especially incumbents usually have enough of an identity to withstand wave elections in presidential years. In mid-terms with the reduced turnout, the people coming out tend to be those who are angry, while those who are satisfied tend to be complacent, and stay home. That’s what’s happened in the last three mid-terms.
Miss Bianca
@Mnemosyne: good for him! My opinion of Snoop Dogg continues to climb.
OzarkHillbilly
@Raven: Cool.
Matt McIrvin
@Cacti: Sam Wang recently recalculated his November predictions, and his one-sigma red band now tops out right around Obama’s 2008 win, though there’s a tail extending some distance above that. But he seems to think Clinton getting up into the high 380s is about as improbable as Trump winning.
glory b
@gwangung: No there aren’t.
Please show your work.
Mnemosyne
@Matt McIrvin:
Yes! It’s been a couple of weeks since we talked about them, and the term went right out of my brain.
There was a police shooting of a black woman in Baltimore County a few weeks ago where she was also a sovereign citizen (and, frankly, nuttier than a fruitcake).
OzarkHillbilly
@Mnemosyne: Sovereign citizen.
R-Jud
@Punchy:
Tell me more.
hovercraft
CNN asked black voters about Trumps pitch.
But how can this be, law student, business owner, obviously this is not real.
Cacti
@Matt McIrvin:
I figure she’ll wind up in the 340-360 range, flipping North Carolina and either Georgia, Missouri, or Arizona.
OzarkHillbilly
@Mnemosyne:
They kind of go together, like salt and pepper.
Calouste
@Miss Bianca:
Accurified.
Just One More Canuck
@Raven: excellent news
1,000 Flouncing Lurkers (was fidelioscabinet)
@shomi: Chill, my shrinking violet.
Because I have no problems following this site’s protocols* for inserting a link, here’s Huffington Post’s aggregate of polls for Virginia; the one with the 16-point gap is the Roanoke College Poll for the 8/7/16-8/17/16 period. The poll just previous to that is Quinnipiac’s, for the period 8/9/16-8/16/16; it put Clinton ahead by 12 percentage points. All the August polls Huffington Post lists there give her a double-digit lead. Except for one, all of the July polls put her ahead as well, although only in the single digits.
*For those who haven’t figured it out, click the LINK button that appears at the top of the comment box. Paste your link into the blank that appears, click OK, add any test you want in the body of the comment, and then click on the /LINK button. Finish your comment, and as you click on POST COMMENT, hope that FYWP doesn’t decide to crush your hopes like a bug, as it is wont to do at random.
Miss Bianca
@Mnemosyne:
’68 or ’72. But I think you’ve hit on an important insight here. Also, not merely that elections aren’t important any more, but that the Democrats – the only party that *actually* gives a shit about doing *anything* for anyone who isn’t a straight white Christian male – have to meet their standards of moral purity before they’ll support them. And who decides these standards of moral purity? In a lot of cases, it’s the opposition and the media – not just mainstream media, but “alternative” media as well. Look at all this tired, lame shit that the left-wing purity trolls keep coming up with here – how *bad* the emails *look*. How *bad* Clinton’s “reticence” about her doctor’s report *looks*. How bad her “$2400 haircut” *looks*. (it shouldn’t, at that price, but you get the point). How bad it *looks* that the Clintons have a foundation, and that some of the family works for it, and that people who gave money to it are also, in a lot of cases, people who want favors. Did these favors occur? Are the emails actually an issue? Is Clinton’s health, or her haircut, actually an issue? No – but oh, regardless of actual merit or demerit, it all *looks bad*, or it’s “not enough”, and my vote is special!
Hashtag terrorism, hashtag progressivism – two sides of the same coin?
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Mike J: I always found it hilarious that it’s called a “consent” decree, because the one thing DOJ absolutely does not give a shit about is whether you consent to it or not. You do it or you’re done. Hopefully their union can sit them down and explain the basic facts of life to them.
Mnemosyne
@OzarkHillbilly:
It is my considered and totally non-professional opinion that anyone who expresses their belief in “sovereign citizen” stuff should be placed on an immediate 72-hour psychiatric hold, especially if — as this woman was doing — they are driving around with a cardboard sign in place of their license plate explaining why the government isn’t allowed to license their car.
She got into a shootout when they came to arrest her after she — surprise, surprise — refused to appear for her court date because the courts are illegitimate. If someone had recognized earlier that driving around with a cardboard sign on your car instead of a license plate is FUCKING CRAZYPANTS and gotten her some emergency psychiatric care, she might be alive today.
Iowa Old Lady
@Raven: Great! Glad to hear it.
Miss Bianca
@Calouste: heh heh! Yeah, that too! ; ) Nobody in Colorado is going to fault a brother who is so unabashed in his appreciation for the Demon Weed!
Patricia Kayden
@hovercraft: Dr. Carson must be trolling Trump with advice on how to reach out to Black voters. That’s the only way I can explain why Trump’s “outreach” attempts to African Americans has been so tone deaf. It’s as if Trump doesn’t know any real Black people.
P.S. He needs to fire whoever told him to reach out to Latino voters by photographing himself in front of a taco bowl with the caption “I love Latinos”. LOL.
Miss Bianca
@Mnemosyne:
Sovereign Citizen. The man was SCWB. Sovereign Citizening While Black. It’s unusual, but it happens.
ETA: OzarkHillbilly got there before me. And Matt McI.
hovercraft
When will black people realize that the 2nd Amendment is not for us.
shomi
@1,000 Flouncing Lurkers (was fidelioscabinet): Yes I know how to post a link. This site blocks all (or at least any I try) links by putting the post into moderation purgatory. Doesn’t seem to matter if I use the link feature or add the link directly. Maybe you are using an admin account. Perhaps try posting using a mere mortal account.
The polls you mentioned are not the one CNN is using. It is a Washington Post poll published today (according to the CNN article). The video interview with Axelrod is kind of interesting.
Patricia Kayden
@Kay (not the front-pager): Does the “brilliant” srv know that Trump is older than Secretary Clinton? So if she’s too old, what is he?
Our rightwing trolls are faltering.
Calouste
@Cacti: Clinton can get to 400 exactly if she flips NC, AZ, MO, GA, SC, MS, and that single district in NE.
Patricia Kayden
@gwangung: I would love to see the stats which show that non-Whites are planning to vote for the Green Party in significant numbers. From the polls I see, Secretary Clinton will get well over 90% of the Black vote and probably upwards of 70% of the Asian and Latino vote. Not sure what would be attractive about the Greens (especially as led by Jill Stein) for minority voters. But that’s just me.
Gindy51
@Kay: Hubby’s golfing buddies have shut the f up about Trump. They dissed him when he was just starting out, then praised his sorry ass once he won, now they do not talk about him at all. not one word, even after a few shots of scotch at the 19th hole. I wish husband had thought to record these idiots when they bashed the hell out of trump. Morons.
catclub
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
I disagree. The whole point is that if you are big and powerful enough, and have enough lawyers, the DOJ negotiates the terms with you.
If you are an ordinary schmoe, they sentence you in court.
Second, I bet the negotiation was with Seattle PD but not necessarily with the Police union, as well.
In that case the Seattle PD has unilaterally changed the terms. If they want to change the terms of the contract, then that is subject to negotiation.
The last alternative is to work to rule.
Ben Cisco
@Miss Bianca: Damned good point, and worth repeating on a regular basis.
Patricia Kayden
@rikyrah: Can’t stand Halperin but I must admit that Game Change which he co-wrote was turned into a fantastic movie, which I’ve watched several times because I just can’t get over how dumb Palin is. I’m hoping that he can write a similarly biting book based on this election season (even though he is partial towards Trump). Would watch the hell out of the movie.
catclub
@Miss Bianca: I just read Barney Frank’s memoir/autobiography. THIS. Exactly this.
Activism makes you feel good about yourself. Winning elections make a difference.
shomi
@Patricia Kayden: Why do you people keep feeding srv? You do realize what that person is doing rrrright?
Peale
Does CNN repeat its panel discussions or have they in fact empaneled the third group today to discuss Trump’s proposal to have a special prosecutor look into those e-mails? It seems like the brady bunch screen of panelists has been on discussing a special prosecutor in the break room each time I’ve taken a pee today. I need to drink less coffee.
Doug R
@Mandalay: I read the letter Hillary’s doctor released. It told pretty much everything I need to know.
hovercraft
@Patricia Kayden:
Deana Bass was a Carson spokes person, and she was on Tweety’s live late night show last night to discuss Trump’s AA outreach efforts (she’s black). She was not at all bothered by Trump, so much so that at the end of the segment Tweety commented on the depth of her loyalty to the conservative cause. Every time he tried to get her to respond, she would turn it back to an attack on Hillary. Some black and Latino republicans have simply given up and no longer try to defend him, but there is a group who are in so deep that nothing he says or does is beyond the pale. Most of those are paid operatives, but still, they do have to look themselves and their families in the face everyday.
cleek
did anyone think to ask John Barron?
Miss Bianca
@hovercraft: Damn. I wish I could say that I was shocked. But I’m not – just saddened.
Mnemosyne
@hovercraft:
Maybe they’re orphans, who were raised by wolves.
… would explain a lot, actually.
Lurker Extraordinaire
@catclub: He and Zach Gefiltefinakis were pretty good in “The Campaign.”
Citizen_X
@Raven: Yay!
Don’t start doing crunches straight away!
manyakitty
@Raven: AWESOME!!!!
Emma
@Mandalay: What the flipping hell? The woman has released actual medical records versus a stupid letter that may or may not have come from a real doctor. You can’t help yourself, can you?
Miss Bianca
@Mnemosyne: No…wolves have a lot more sense of caring for their communities than these people show.
The Other Chuck
@Calouste: Clinton is about as likely to win South Carolina as Trump is to win California.
1,000 Flouncing Lurkers (was fidelioscabinet)
@shomi: No, I am a mere mortal. Maybe the site just likes me better…
1,000 Flouncing Lurkers (was fidelioscabinet)
@The Other Chuck: I think the former is more likely, really. Not, perhaps, in absolute terms, a certain positive, but in South Carolina, like Mississippi and Georgia, the Mittster’s margin of victory in 2012 was under 15%, with not too many white people voting for the incumbent. So there is room to grow the vote share among whites, with a solid Democratic base already in place–and while not all the 2012 Obama voters may vote for Clinton, very few will vote for Trump. Realistically, she may not be able to increase her share of the vote from Obama/s in 2012–but statistically, she’s not an at overwhelming disadvantage, the way she is in other southeastern states.
Granted, except for Georgia, these three states are single-digit in terms of electoral vote–South Carolina has, I think, 9 and Mississippi 6, but losing those states would be a real shocker for Republicans. For that reason, I’d like to see it happen, but I’m not counting on it. I’ll just feel really smug if it does, because it means there are people there starting to accept they live in the 21st century. It also means there will be a lot of white men wandering around saying “What the hell just happened?”
catclub
@1,000 Flouncing Lurkers (was fidelioscabinet): yeah, me too. No problem posting links.
just a mortal.
Lurker Extraordinaire
@Raven: So happy for you. To your health!
catclub
like this.
enjoy – pretty
shomi
@1,000 Flouncing Lurkers (was fidelioscabinet): Clearly you really know your IT stuff when you describe site behaviour in terms of personality.
Maybe you should stick with coming up with more overly ambitious handles.
1,000 Flouncing Lurkers (was fidelioscabinet)
@shomi: Bless your heart.
jenn
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Actually, it was the union that was throwing up the roadblocks. As of June (?), however, there’s new union leadership, so hopefully that will help. Here’s a recent Seattle Times article about the issue, including a judicial tongue-lashing, with what I’ve heard is the first time a federal judge has said “Black Lives Matter” in a ruling. (And, by the way, a GWB-appointed judge.)
J R in WV
@Raven:
Whoa!! He’s still alive, and able to type!!!
Congrats, Raven! Glad to hear from you…. I’ve been off-line to town for provisions, is why I’m so late.
Matt McIrvin
@The Other Chuck: Going by current polls, Clinton is about as likely to win SC as Trump is to win Ohio. That is to say, it probably won’t happen, but there’s definitely an outside shot.
worn
@shomi: The most tenditious little thing since matoko chan aren’t you?